Bird dreams

I'm dreaming about lots of weird stuff at the moment. One of my strange dreams featured this dying bird that kept turning up wherever I went. I kept thinking it was dead and being a bit relieved that it wasn't suffering anymore and then I'd see it lift its head off the ground again and I'd be like OH NO! THE BIRD IS STILL ALIVE!! It wasn't that I wanted the bird to die, I just hated seeing it suffering. At one point, I was seriously distressed and wanting someone to put the bird out of its misery but knowing that I COULD. NOT. be the one to do it. Yeah, it was weird.

So I just looked up the dream interpretation website (as you do when you have an Epi assignment due...) and here is what it says:

To dream of chirping and/or flying birds, represents joy, harmony, ecstasy, balance, and love. It denotes a sunny outlook in life. You are experiencing spiritual freedom and psychological liberation. It is almost as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.

To dream of dead or dying birds, foretells a period of coming disappointments. You will find yourself worrying over problems that are constantly on your mind.

Excellent.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

I feel a bit bad that I haven't posted much lately but OH MY GOD my life has got busy. And not just busy with a lot of activity but busy in my head as well. I don't kow if that makes sense, but there is a lot of crazy stuff going on, particularly at my workplace and it's totally been doing my head in. Argh!

Maverick is travelling again, and of course is completely obsessed with his work (which I admire, mind you, because I do tend to get a bit the same way) but sadly it doesn't leave a lot of room for caring and sharing when we're both going at a million miles an hour towards our individual goals.

I have an assignment due Thursday and I'm supposed to be doing it right now (erm... I was never here) and then I have my two coaching clients on Friday (the day I took off from work so I could study and have some free time, but no - let's book two coaching clients in on that day) and then I have to do a little presentation first up Monday morning, which I have prepared, but really need to do a little polishing up. And Mel gets home tomorrow, but leaves again on Saturday at 5am, so the weekend is pretty much out for my uni stuff. I did mention BUSY??!

In toilet training news, we have had the odd accident overnight, but normally she's very good at telling us if she needs to go. She did one poo in her knickers before deciding that was very gross and never did it again. And she did have one day when she seemed to be a bit lazy and wet her pants but again, she seemed to quickly decide that wasn't pleasant, so the slip-ups are few and far between which means Roberta, you can have the ladder seat for Miss Nina-Moo! :-D

Oh, and for those of you to whom I may have mentioned that we had decided to have another baby...? Yeah, I got over that.

Later, groovers. Epi assignment is not going to write itself unfortunately.

Things that suck

Traffic jams.

People who lie and backstab to further their own agenda.

Feeling helpless while people lie and backstab, because it becomes one person's word against another's

Things that are fab

Good, trustworthy friends who make me laugh (and don't lie or backstab - see above)

Annabelle being toilet trained

Having Fridays off!

My big new TV (ok, I could easily have lived without it, but it's nice to have)

My kid is toilet trained

Yep, just like that.

And thanks for the emails on the subject by the way (and apologies for being a CRAP friend and not replying to most of them! Have I mentioned BUSY?!!!)...

If you are not in the least bit interested in the ins and outs of toilet training a toddler child, I suggest you stop reading now. Just feel free to send me congratulatory messages on my exceptional parenting because obviously I did something amazing to achieve this miraculous toileting turnaround. HA HA HA!

For the rest of you, and particularly those who were worried that I might be worried about her lack of progress in this dept.. I think I was in fact most worried that I might be being a bit too slack about the whole thing. Like, she was ready but I wasn't giving her enough opportunity/encouragement, y'know? But then on the other hand, she did seem to have some mortal fear of using the toilet. And that did concern me just a wee bit (pardon the pun).

I can honestly say that my contribution to the toilet-training process has consisted of:

• 1. Bribing her with marshmallows (which didn't work), and
• 2. Forcing her to wee in the toilet on ONE occasion. She cried and it made me feel awful. :( She was sitting on the toilet doing her big "I'm going to wee" thing (pretending) and then she realised that she was actually going to wee. She suddenly got a completely terrified look on her face and said "I'M GOING TO WEE!!!!!" and I kept encouraging her, "yes it's ok, just do a wee. It's ok, etc.." but the poor little poppet looked mortified, much like I imagine I would look if I suddenly had to wee in the middle of a football stadium with 90,000 eyes on me. It was that look of sheer, utter terror. Ultimately she couldn't hold on and she actually did wee, but she cried the whole way through it. I felt like the shittest parent in the world.

  Until it was all done, at which time I clapped, cheered, told her what an amazingly special child she is and gave her THREE marshmallows. It was SO worth it to see how utterly pleased she was with her own effort.

That was a week and a half ago, and after that, I left it alone. I figured now she'd had the chance to realise that weeing in the toilet is not so terrifying, it was up to her to decide when she was up for it. For the next few days, she continued to wear knickers to daycare, but after the first "accident" of the day, she would ask for a nappy. No drama. Then, about four days later - on a Saturday at home - she asked to go to the toilet and she actually went to the toilet!! HALLELUJAH!!!

That was last Saturday. She alternated nappies and knickers for a few days but from about Tuesday she was in knickers full-time. She was still wearing a night-time nappy though...

On Wednesday morning I noticed that when I took off her night nappy, it was completely dry. So the next night, we put her to bed in knickers and she woke up dry. Yippee! And just to prove the point, this morning she woke up at 3.30am from a bad dream and came to bed with us, and while she was tossing and turning trying to get back to sleep, she told us she needs to wee, so Mel took her to the toilet and she did indeed wee. What a bloody marvel, as my Grade One teacher used to say.

And to bring this toilet training ramble to a close, today we did poos in the toilet AND we had several trips out of the house and had to use public toilets, all with no accidents. So I think it is safe to say that we are well and truly Toilet Trained.

A little feminist rant

Good friends of ours, Luke and Ruth, have just bought a massively huge, gorgeous new home in Queensland. It is fabulous, no doubt about it... and did I mention HUGE? Luke posted the pics on Facebook and someone commented - a woman mind you - that she hoped he was getting Ruth a cleaner. Luke replied that she (Ruth) already has a cleaner.

Ruth and Luke are both professional people. They both work and own a business. They manage their working hours around their two teenage children and two small foster children.

Why then, is it Ruth's cleaner? WHY WHY WHY is hiring a cleaner considered to be something to help out the WOMAN in the household to do "her" chores? Can anyone explain this to me? Because it irritates me, in case you hadn't noticed.

A word of advice

If you're ever thinking of giving yourself a Brazilian wax, DON'T DO IT!! It is a job best left to a professional. Say no more.

Time

There is never enough of it. Certainly not while there's a toddler in the house. Books don't get read, blogs don't get written, study doesn't get done, house remains a bombsite.

That's all.

What a way to go.

Today I had my first session of Intro to Epidemiology. It's a blah-type Public Health subject that has little to do with psychology but I have to do it, since it's part of the Masters in HEALTH Psychology. I was sitting next to my buddy, Nick. If I haven't mentioned Nick already, let me introduce you. Nick is tall, good-looking and athletic. The fact that he's studying a Masters in Psychology means one could reasonably assume he's intelligent as well. And a nice guy. What more could you want if you were like.. a 22 year old single girl in Adelaide?? Which obviously I AM NOT, but there you go. Now you know Nick.

So me and Nick are sitting in Epidemiology and the lecturer is discussing the difference between prevalence and incidence when it comes to disease. She's throwing up various tables listing all manner of diseases and death rates and statistics. Just as my eyes are glazing over, Nick leans over to me and whispers, "What's congenital malfornication?"

I study the table a little more closely, trying to find what he's talking about. Finally I see a line that reads "Congenital Malformation", so I lean back to him and whisper "Congenital Malformation??", and he whispers back "Malformation?". I give him a little nod and we both go back to concentrating on our notes.

A few seconds later, Nick leans back over and whispers "I thought it said congenital malfornication and I was seriously wondering what those people were doing when they were having sex. I mean... what the...? How were they...? What were they...?"

And we both giggled like school children.

It's a dickless...

That's what Annabelle told me in the car on the way home from daycare yesterday. "Oh Mummy. It's a DICKLESS! *giggle*". She said it several times during the evening. "This is a dickless. That's a dickless."

Of course, what she meant was ridiculous. :)

She's coming out with some pearlers lately. The other day when I was telling her off for something or other, she looked at me very sternly and said "You talk nicely to me please, Mummy. You don't need to make me sad." And when Mel and I were having a discussion in the car, she interrupted us from her carseat in the back: "Mummy! Talk nicely to daddy please. And Daddy, you talk nicely to mummy. Otherwise you will sit out." We weren't even arguing!! It does really make you think about what they're seeing/perceiving though.

In other news, I started uni this week. Proper First Semester type uni that is.. not wussy Summer School type uni. I cannot believe I have an assessment due in TWO WEEKS. Fark. No such thing as easing into it, then. I have NO idea how I'm going to juggle work and uni and I do think that I'm probably going to end up resigning. The trouble is replacing the income. On the upside, if I was just studying (not working) I could easily drop one day of daycare and spend it with my girl, which would be a bonus for both of us. We'll see. I decided to give it a couple of weeks to see how I'm tracking before I make any big decisions.